Category Archives: Transhuman News

Whether ones skin be black or white, all people are equal; it may be that each is superior in knowledge, wealth, beauty but there is no superiority in human dignity.-Emilio Jacinto

patriotism will always be a virtue amongoppressed peoples, because it will at all times mean love of justice, of liberty, of personal dignity. Jose Rizal

There is something faintly disingenuous about the latest line of thinking, pushed by elected and appointed government officials, concerning cybercrime and human trafficking. Ever sincenewsbroke internationally about the absolutely abhorrent practice of child prostitution and abuse via the internet, local pundits and officials have attempted to recast the issue of human trafficking as one of cybercrime; overtly linking the issue to the current Supreme Court TRO on the implementation of the flawed Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (See Note on Critiques of the Cybercrime Prevention Act at the end of this essay). Recently, Senator Grace Poe, a staunch supporter of the Freedom of Information Act, came out in support of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 and exhorted the Supreme Court to lift their temporary retraining order:

We passed it in 2012, buts now its pending before the court because of the libel provision. Thats understandable, but now we really need it because cyberpornography is becoming widespread, she said. Philippine Daily Inquirer: Poe: Child porn underscores importance of cybercrime law

Without going to much into detail, the Cybercrime Prevention Act is a law that is fundamentally flawed through its restriction of basic essential human rights, while placing certain unchecked powers in the hands of government. There is little doubt the government needs new tools to survive in a changing world; which bills like the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom attempt to address without the infirmities inherent in the Cybercrime Prevention Act.

With regards to the current form of discourse (as framed by Senator Poe and others), the conflation of human trafficking and child pornography (or cyber-pornography) is a dangerous and disingenuous one. The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 has littleactualbearing on the issue of child prostitution and human trafficking in the Philippines, instead it supposedly combats the modes of dissemination, and backtracks prosecution from there. Yet, the focus on the method of dissemination obscures what is really at the heart of the problem: A decades long inability to combat child prostitution and human trafficking. We have turned our brethren into commodities, salable to the highest, or readiest, bidder. Patriotism as love of neighbor, and country as upholding liberty and inherent human dignity, is in short supply. For years, we have failed to protect Filipinos and create an inclusive environment, anchored on the protection of human rights, that allows them to develop and grow. This is a symptom of that problem.

The Perils of Short-Term Thinking and the Specter of Filipino Slavery

The disingenuousness of the current discourse on child prostitution and cybercrime is found in the intellectually bankrupt linking of the two via the TRO on the Cybercrime Prevention Act. Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa exemplified this way of thinking, when hesaid:

The debate on the Cybercrime Law focuses on the substantial part of it. But the police needs the procedural aspect of the law so that we can run after these pedophiles,

Lets be frank, the Cybercrime law is an expedient method for potentially shutting down (and that is up for serious debate, based on the information technology capabilities our government has demonstrated so far) thecurrent, favoredmethod for disseminating pornography to the Western world (dont forget, the primary market for pornography, whether vanilla or reprehensible is the West). Point of fact, we have a number of existing laws that can be utilized to combat and prosecute human trafficking and child pornography, regardless of the method used to transmit the material: the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 (RA 9775), the Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009 (RA 9995), and the Anti Trafficking in Persons Act, (RA 9208, as amended by RA 10364). All of these, not to mention the usual laws we have on the books regarding pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking, are all useful and necessary in rooting out human trafficking though also in dire need of expansion and strengthening. The linking of the current situation with Cybercrime Prevention Act smells of an implicit attempt to whitewash long-standing failures on the part of government and police forces to truly combat and root out human trafficking throughout the archipelago. Child prostitution and human trafficking are not new problems, only the use of the internet to convey it.

See the original post here:
Filipino Slavery in the Digital Age: Human Trafficking, Prostitution, and Cybercrime

Its official: Gothams Commission on Human Rights has dropped its lawsuit against seven Hasidic-owned stores in Brooklyn whose high crime it was to post signs giving the following notice: No Shorts, No Barefoot, No Sleeveless, No Low Cut Necklines.

On Tuesday, the commission agreed the signs can be re-posted provided they include an additional line saying what the shops had contended all along: All customers are welcome. Too bad it took 18 months of litigation to get here.

The signs in these shops were no different than the dress codes required by posh Manhattan restaurants or even some local pizzerias. Only in the fevered imagination of the citys human-rights office could they be construed as a nefarious attempt to impose Orthodox Judaism on customers.

Even after an administrative law judge rejected that argument, the commission continued to press a lawsuit, raising the proposed fines from $2,500 per store to an astonishing $75,000. Its hard to say whether this reflected some animus against Orthodox Jewry or simply an effort to extort more revenues for the city through small-business fines or a little of both.

On the eve of trial, the city essentially caved. The commissions statement that the store owners understand their obligations is pure face-saving. The shopkeepers won a near-total victory, thanks to the top-flight law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which took the case pro bono.

Still, the signals this litigation sent were disturbing, and the larger question is this: If the citys Commission on Human Rights is supposed to protect New Yorkers civil and religious liberties, who protects us from the Commission on Human Rights?

Read this article:
Hasidic stores win fight with city Human Rights Commission

A joint study between the University of Auckland and the University of York (UK) into the impact humans have on the environment has been awarded a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellowship.

INTERACT (Integrating Archaeological and Climatological Datasets: Investigating Global Human-Environmental Interactions) is a new three-year post-doctoral collaboration between The University of Auckland and the University of York.

The project will receive 300,000 in funding from the European Union and is set to start in January 2015.

It aims to compare the way people dealt with the shifts in environment related to climate change in sub-tropical regions - those with access to domesticated plants and animals, and those which relied on hunting and gathering.

By exploring these interactions through a global, multi-disciplinary study it will allow for the results to be shared with archaeologists world-wide.

The project will build on fieldwork in Cape York Australia, and the Farasan Islands, Saudi Arabia.

The research will be led by Professor Simon Holdaway of Anthropology in the University of Aucklands School of Social Sciences, and Professor Geoff Bailey at the University of York.

Post-doctoral fellow Dr Matthew Meredith-Williams of the University of York will also be spending the first two years in Auckland working with Professor Holdaway before returning to York for the final year of the project.

"The post-doctoral fellowship will stimulate new collaborative research projects between the University of Auckland and the University of York and reflects the international focus of the research conducted at Auckland," Professor Holdaway says.

This project is funded by Marie Curie research as part of the European Union grant award system to encourage ground-breaking research in a broad range of fields. It is named after the pioneering physicist Professor Marie Skodowska-Curie, who discovered Radium could be used to successfully treat cancer.

Original post:
University study will investigate human impact on the environment